Sir Bloom sighed with a worried face as if it was quite troubling, and Gideon was dumbfounded. From his perspective, this concern was far too late.

‘If you hated her doing dangerous things, you should have taken away her sword long ago. Didn’t you always let her be?’

Though he never taught her strictly with rolled-up sleeves like his top disciple, he also never strongly discouraged her with rolled-up sleeves. Sir Bloom always just watched Tatiana and only gave slight direction when she wandered.

He defended his lukewarm attitude like this:

‘How can a father take away what his daughter loves? Isn’t that something even parents shouldn’t do?’

‘So what are you going to do from now on?’

‘I don’t know either, Your Highness. Raising a girl is too difficult.’

‘……Miss Tatiana isn’t a child anymore, now.’

That day, the Count and Gideon both frowned and laughed a lot.

A conversation that felt warm rather than businesslike.

That became the last casual chat the two would ever share.

Gideon issued his first order as a prince of Valter. The person he designated for this symbolic and honorable mission was the Deputy Commander of the royal guard, Sir Bloom.

And Sir Bloom, while carrying out that mission, breathed his last in the cold northern lands along with his knights. Without leaving any clues about the perpetrator.

Who could have predicted that a war hero would meet his end this way?

Gideon never could accept this empty and absurd death.

However, there was someone else who mourned that death more than anyone.

His remaining family. Tatiana, now eighteen.

But throughout her father’s funeral, Tatiana remained impossibly straight-backed. While many mourned, she shed not a single tear, only offering the blue rose that was her family’s symbol. As if this was her duty as the chief mourner, as if it was the Bloom honor that had to be maintained before people until the end.

After completing the solemn funeral procedures, Tatiana returned to her home.

Gideon followed her, having dismissed all his attendants.

When he grabbed her shoulder to turn her around and met those green eyes.

The intelligence that Sir Bloom had praised endlessly during his lifetime worked frantically. Countless pretty words swirled in his head and mouth.

I didn’t know this would happen either. If I had known, I wouldn’t have given such an order. Really. But Tatiana. Think about it. This is a meaningless assumption. No one could have predicted it. Not even me.

Gideon couldn’t utter any of those words. These were too wicked self-justifications to lay out before a daughter who had lost her father.

However, Tatiana’s eyes held no resentment toward Gideon or the royal family. Rather, her expression suggested she didn’t understand why he was here. She really did ask this:

‘Why did you come here.’

‘What do you mean why.’

‘……There’s no reason for you to come anymore. Now.’

Gideon received quite a shock then.

He had always visited the Count’s mansion to receive sword training. That’s what Tatiana was pointing out.

Now that her father was gone, you have no reason to come here, right? But between us, is that really…… all there was?

Gideon realized at that moment. He hadn’t been coming to the Count’s mansion all this time to learn swordsmanship. He had just used the sword as an excuse because he was curious about Tatiana, because he wanted to see her.

The moment that plausible excuse disappeared. When Sir Bloom’s existence was removed from between them, he could clearly confirm his own feelings.

However, he couldn’t explain to Tatiana the real reason he was here. The truth was that he liked her, but the situation seemed too broken now to express those feelings belatedly.

Tatiana tried to chase him away with a lifeless expression.

‘……Please leave.’

Gideon couldn’t bear to leave her alone. Unable to find any plausible excuses or pretexts to present, he just stood there biting his lips.

And gradually, resentment and grief filled the eyes of Tatiana who kept pushing Gideon away.

Ah. She hates me. That’s natural. She probably can’t stand the sight of me now. No excuse or compensation could possibly comfort her.

But she didn’t aim those arrows of resentment at the royal family and Gideon. The reason she wanted to send him out of the mansion was simply because she felt like crying.

Because she felt like she would collapse right now.

This shouldn’t happen. She didn’t want to show such a miserable appearance before people. She needed to stand straight and adult-like, for her Dad who died as a knight.

But before this familiar face she had known since childhood, she couldn’t maintain that mindset to the end and collapsed. 

 ‘I told you, sob, to leave.’

‘……Tatiana.’

‘I don’t want to show you this……!’

Tatiana sobbed with her face covered, and Gideon, not knowing what to do, hesitated before sitting down on the grass beside her. Then he tightly embraced her trembling shoulders.

‘I’ll catch them.’

‘……’

‘The ones who did this to your father, I’ll make them kneel before your eyes.’ 

 ‘……’

‘I promise…… so don’t cry.’

No, just cry. I know you who used to sniffle every day disappointed about not having magic. I’m someone who knows all about how you used to peek at my talent with envy and sometimes feel intimidated. But you don’t need to stand as a Bloom before me even in this situation.

Tatiana cried her heart out in his arms. 

 The events of the past few days must have been too painful and overwhelming.

After crying for a long while, Tatiana fell asleep as if she had fainted. Only after laying her on the bed and personally covering her with a blanket did Gideon leave the mansion.

The promise he made to Tatiana.

He wondered how she had taken it. Perhaps she hadn’t placed much meaning in it, Gideon thought.

Finding the culprits, making an example of them. Such things were what the royal family typically said to families of those who died in the line of duty.

It might have sounded like a detestable, empty promise. However, Gideon hadn’t spoken to Tatiana merely as a prince.

He was just a man then.

A man who couldn’t calculate the feasibility of that promise before the tears of the woman he liked.

Just an ordinary man…… who could say anything to stop those tears.

Gideon stood under the darkening sky and gazed at the Count’s mansion where Tatiana was for a very long time. 

 * * *

 After finishing dinner with the Mullers, Gideon and Tatiana walked outside as if by prior arrangement.

The two were recalling a day just like this in their minds.

Tatiana glanced at him from the corner of her eye, but Gideon was silent as if someone had suddenly sealed his mouth. In the end, she was the one who spoke first.

“You couldn’t catch them?”

Gideon nodded briefly. Then asked in an extremely quiet voice.

“Are you disappointed?”

“……No.”

It would be a lie to say she didn’t feel bitter. However, too much time had already passed. Since she hadn’t expected them to be caught, there wasn’t much disappointment.

Rather, Tatiana was surprised by something else.

“I didn’t know you still held that in your heart.”

“Is that so? It’s only natural. I rather thought you had forgotten everything, Titi.” 

 “……”

Though she had gone through a major event and even lost consciousness in the middle, how could she forget even that brief conversation? However, Tatiana did want to forget that day. To be more precise, she just wanted to bury it.

The fact that she had danced with her sword while crying tears before him — she had hoped that could be cutely dismissed as something she did because she was young. This was a memory that wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone to dig up.

Naturally, Tatiana had been too emotional that day. She had acted coldly toward someone who had followed her out of concern, and later she seemed to have cried and raged quite a bit.

In fact, she had punched his chest several times with her fists, and seeing how he often mentioned ‘no violence,’ she wondered if it had hurt a lot back then.

Tatiana looked away from Gideon’s gaze with an embarrassed face. It meant let’s stop talking about this now.

But even though Gideon understood completely, he met her eyes and asked:

“Do you…… resent me?”

Tatiana sighed at those words in exasperation. This question was too complicated to answer with just yes or no.

But she first shook her head and then asked him in return,

“Your Highness, when I need you, if you come to me and the bridge collapses, would you say that’s my fault?”

That would be an accident. Neither Tatiana’s fault nor Gideon’s carelessness. Her father’s death was the same. Gideon had given orders to his knight, and her father had simply tried to carry them out.

Of course, she hadn’t been able to think this rationally from the beginning.

When you lose family, everything becomes hateful and unbearable to look at — there was a time when she irrationally hated even the people passing by on the street.

But if I were to blame you…….

‘Then my Dad would become someone who died carrying out wrong orders. I don’t want his actions to be remembered that way.’

Moreover, Tatiana knew.